Former People

by Douglas Smith (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

This history of the Russian aristocracy after the Bolshevik Revolution follows two families—the Sheremetevs, of St. Petersburg, and the Golitsyns, of Moscow. Immeasurably rich under the tsars, both families were stripped of their property and their rights after the Revolution, becoming invisible outcasts—“former people.” Counts accustomed to gilded mansions spent Siberian winters hiding in crowded, drafty boxcars; a countess sold her diamond diadem on the street for a single bag of flour; a noble sentenced to death in the Gulag hid the awful truth from his pregnant wife on her final visit; families weathered exile; mothers waited patiently for jailed children who would never return home. Although many of the aristocrats thought the end of their caste “obvious and unavoidable,” few foresaw the destruction of a way of life. Smith’s engaging and, at times, heartbreaking account is an essential record of that loss. ♦